Walkin' After Midnight
by legendarytobes
Summary: Some bonds can't be broken, and some only get stronger with time.


**Walkin' After Midnight**

The first time he comes to her, she's trying that domestic thing, cooking dinner (or burning it depending on the point of view) for Oliver. She's not any good at the housewife thing. Oh she does her days at The Register , working her way up from the basement yet again when she thought she was over that back in her early twenties. It's long days most of the time, and half of her stories are about pigeons or parking meter price hikes. It gives her deja vu, but it's honest and what she has to do to get ahead. She wanted to mentor at night, really she did, but it's exhausting pulling ten hour days and coming home to be what Oliver wants, what he expects from a marriage.

There's no ivory tower but it's not what she thought it would be and, if she's honest with herself, she wasn't ready, not for this and not for a Vegas-style wedding that she can't remember. It's two marriages now that are a blur and she hates it. At least she has journalism again, a goal for her to work towards. Elizabeth Cochran , investigative reporter extraordinaire. It almost feels like home.

But she knows better.

Her home is under the golden globe and always will be.

When Clark comes, she has to roll her eyes. He's in that stupid suit of his and she hates it. She's the one who told him he'd be in red and blue and, truly, she already saw it, but she still doesn't have to like it. She knew he had to come forth eventually, but there was something to be said for jeans and a red jacket. Everything about him seems so artificial-either as 'Clark' or 'Superman'-but maybe that's the same about her too with her assumed name and an identity she carved together that's as real as Kara's was.

"Hey, can you do a girl a favor?" she asks.

Clark shrugs but his expression is fairly blank. She remembers him as more expressive, how often he smiled back in Smallville, but that was a lifetime ago, or at least two years since everything with Darkseid. "Sure?"

"I, uh, might have set something," she said, pointing at her smoking pork chops.

He grins at her and he's her Clark for a minute and blows the mess out, freezing the meat on top of it. She rolls her eyes. He was never all that great with that one and she remembers teaching him that and the cold that made him an air canon. She remembers many things.

"How's domestic bliss?" he asks, and he's sitting in her kitchen in that stupid cape and, even if Ollie wear the leather around the house when he's gotten back from a late night, it's not as glaring to her as Clark in that suit. Still, it's an easy rhythm, if a little rusty, and she forces herself to smile.

"It's good, really. I'm close to getting to the fifth floor. I have this series on the missing funding for the Star City public school system and paper trail for embezzlement by the head of the city's school system."

"That's great!" he enthuses and she can tell he actually means it. She could always see right through him, even as kids in a loft long ago.

"Yeah, I'm almost twenty-seven and I've been waiting for forever it seems to get out of the basement anywhere. Lois is already under the Tiffanies with Perry-"

"I'm not," Clark says and his tone is resigned. "It doesn't look right, you know?"

"I'm not sure I follow," she says, scraping the remains of the not-meal into the trashcan. "You're beyond kitten articles. I read the stuff you co-authored on the VRA and it was really good. How'd you get back on City Hall minutia for page 70? I mean, after five years, you'd think that you'd be at least with real windows."

"I don't want to be promoted, Chlo. I don't want the attention."

"You deserve it," she counters. "I would know. I have a feel for good journalism."

"Of course you do," he says, relaxing, his posture finally less rigid. "Attention is bad. If I'm in the basement, then there's about zero chance anyone connects me to 'Superman.'"

"But everyone wants to get ahead in life."

"Maybe," he says. "Maybe not."

There's the sound of a key turning in the lock and before she can even notice the motion he's gone. She makes nice, offers Oliver her turn to pay for Chinese take out, but she can't help feeling, well, not like she's cheating. Clark saving her from fiery pork chops of doom isn't exactly intimate, but she has a feeling him just dropping in isn't what his fiance or her husband would want.

So she pokes at her Moo Goo Gai Pan and laughs at jokes she's heard before, all while glaring at the ring on her finger. It feels heavier by the day.

Clark doesn't come to her regularly, beyond when she gets together with him and Lois for Christmas and Thanksgiving, after the occasional Watchtower emergency that they can't do without her. She stays away from that as much as she can, leaves it mostly to J'onn to deal with and whoever else is on rotating duty. She was the Ghost in the Machine once and, while she'll never spite the world over it, she'll still not ever going to be more than a consultant. She can't let that be her life; she finally found herself and her roots, and she won't lose it again, not ever.

So she sees Clark but like a cousin or a distant relative. While she calls Lois daily (some traditions never change), Clark doesn't figure into her Rolodex. Except then things change.

Don't they always and it's all too familiar. It's three years into her "marriage" that's really not, when she learns what the late Tess Mercer also had shoved in her face the hard way. It figures she'd find them, him and Dinah in a little used hallway in Watchtower when they're supposed to saving the world. She assumes it's panicked oh God we're gong to die groping, but it shows her what she'd seen and known deep down since before the Justice Society showed up. Those flirty emails, the way Dinah was possessive of him and distrustful of her even in the computer world, it made sense that passion would ignite.

She supposes she's lucky that it's not just a cocktail waitress.

Clark has Lois and Oliver has Dinah and she flashes back to Jimmy ping-ponging from her to Kara. She can't compete with blonde superheroines with actual powers. She can't stay in Star City, and she'll never stay in Metropolis again, knowing that the paper she loves is not her home. Bart offers her time at his place in Central City while she apartment hunts, but, while she cares about him like a friend, she's never cared about him like that and he'll only hit on her and make it all awkward.

She knows where she's going.

As far from everything as she can get-from Smallville, from "Chloe Sullivan," from the cousin she loves but has everything she wanted.

From the man she loves and he's not an archer.

She's unpacking her breakables in Singapore, getting off the bubble and getting long strands of her finally grown out hair, when he comes. He's not in the gaudy suit this time. It's just him, not even with the glasses. Just her friend in jeans and a white t-shirt.

Clark looks down at the floor and she can see the blush working its way to his ears. "Do you...would you like a hug?"

She smiles and crosses the floor of her modest apartment. He's wrapping her in her arms then and she feels as she did when she came off the Veritas serum, that she'll be safe in his arms no matter what. Idly, she wonders if he's ever felt that way about her, about one human girl. After all the saves she'd done for him, even down to stopping Darkseid's gold K plot, she kind of hope he does.

Looking up at him, smiling yet sniffling, she says, "Since when do we have boundaries."

"Not often," he confesses, sitting at her kitchen table, which is at least unpacked. "Do you want me to speed that done for you?"

"Nah, I need the distraction."

"Going offer. You'll be unpacked in five minutes, tops."

"You wouldn't know where I want my knick-knacks."

He grins and again it's relaxed, like what she never sees at Watchtower and rarely at family gatherings. It's like their eighteen again. He blurs and she rolls her eyes at the breeze he kicks up. Her apartment is up and running and everything is exactly where she would have put it. He knows her too well, in some ways, and in others he can be so clueless.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Sure," she says, swiping at her eyes. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He looks at her and it's a bit more pity than she wanted. "Ollie's an asshole. If you need me to beat him up-"

"He'd end up in an Altoids box," she counters.

"I'm okay with that."

She's not even sure he's kidding.

Reaching out, she pats his forearm. "It's my lot in life. The meteor mutants who stalked me. Jimmy divorcing me and all the nasty things he said. Oliver's wandering eye when I knew Tess's history with him and his wandering eye. I mean, I saw it. He and Dinah always had something between them."

Clark nods, quiet. "Still, it's not you, you know."

"Maybe it is. I'm not Lana or Lois or even Dinah. I'm not that girl. I'm just Chloe, just one of the boys really. I'm used to being overlooked. I just though I'd catch one break."

He folds in on himself and starts picking at the formica. "That's me, isn't it?"

She squeezes his arm again. "I was never good at math. Three's a suck number. Someone has to...as long as you're happy, that's what matters. And you are, right?"

He nods but pauses. He reaches up to his nose and she realizes he's looking for glasses to take off and clean. A nervous habit cultivated to hide himself. Stopping when he remembers he didn't wear them with her, he shrugs instead. "I think so. I miss the farm and I don't like being such a dork at the Planet. I thought Lois and I would work more together, but it's okay. It's what I'm supposed to be doing."

She knows that tone. She had that with herself in her marriage with Oliver. "So when are you all making it official?"

Clark blinks as if she's slipped into Kryptonian. "Official?"

"A real wedding, duh. There's got to be something some time." She hates herself for always wanting to make him feel better, but it's the penance she always pays for selling him out, for being petty and nasty and fifteen. She bears it.

"We're not sure yet. I'll let you know," he says, standing up and heading to her balcony and, yeah, she knows she got an apartment made like this for him. When your best friend can fly, why wouldn't you?

She follows him out to the porch and he hugs her once more, a little longer than an in-law probably should have. "Chloe, you're worth it. I...you'll find someone, I promise."

She laughs and wants to ask if he's had the Fate Helmet on lately, but she doesn't. She's only scars now, a new batch cutting into her for trusting Oliver, and Clark's left the most. "I'm an independent kind of gal. The Gotham Gazette is paying me handsomely as a foreign correspondent and that's my real love."

He lets her go and turns to the open sky. "I know."

There's a breeze and he's gone again. He's like that.

He comes late at night (Kansas time) to see her. She always takes her lunch hour at home, so he can come to her around his midnight and she wonders if he's told Lois about this. She knows she won't. They're not doing anything different than they ever did before he got engaged and she moved. They talk, sometimes shop and she's his sounding board for the latest evil afoot, sometimes about politics at the DP and what he hates or likes about it, never about Lois. He never offers and she won't pressure. It's a non-named thing between them, because when they don't talk about it, they're back to that golden six months after Lana and before Jimmy, when things were possible. When they were still kids and not locked into their roles in life.

She likes their lunches (his snacks, really). She doesn't eat turkey sandwiches now, preferring noodles and pork with tea while he still eats his beloved ham and Swiss. Who even knows what deli he gets it from when he can be in New York in a minute. Sometimes they even eat, just listening to a radio station on her laptop, something with lots of alternative rock like he's always liked and she's always tolerated.

It's very them.

She starts dating again, a fellow foreign correspondent from The London Times . He's funny and smart and she's taken with his intellect. She hasn't ever dated anyone as clever or as up on world events. Jimmy was so myopic and Oliver was never the brains of their operation. Clark would...but Clive is a good man.

She regrets jumping into bed so fast.

Chloe regrets even more forgetting her diaphragm.

She knows the day the heart starts beating, and she doesn't even need an ultrasound for it. Clark comes as always at noon, his arms loaded down this time with subs from her favorite place in Smallville, a gesture to her and it's sweet. She takes the bags quickly and holds them to her stomach, as if that'll hide anything. He's in the middle of a rant about The Batman-they clash often-when he stops dead, quirking his head at her in a way that reminds her of Shelby.

Caught.

He squints at her then and his expression is unreadable. He looks disappointed but Chloe shoos that idea away, squashes it like childhood crushes and kisses in The Daily Planet basement. He had his choice, twice over even, first Lana and then her own cousin, her blood. He has no fucking right to think of her in a back pocket way.

"You know," she says, her tone icier than she wants. "You're supposed to say congratulations."

"How far are you?"

"Six weeks, maybe a little longer."

He frowns. "You've been here six months. It can't be Oliver's."

"It's not. I met someone."

"You live alone," he counters.

"He doesn't know yet either." His frown deepens and she can hear another Jonathan Kent patented platitude coming. She cuts him off before he can slip into self-righteous. "I'm going to tell him, see what we'll do. I...you're the first person to know. I didn't even tell Lois."

"Would you have told me, if I didn't know it?"

"No. This is private."

"Since when do we have boundaries?" he echoes.

"You proposed, Clark, and that's when the walls came down. You can't have us both, you know. Lois for, well, whatever it is after you eat a snack with me and me for long talks and emotional intimacy. I have a life and I have to live it."

"You're better than this, you know. Than a kid out of wedlock with a guy you barely know."

"I have my resources. Christ I'm twenty eight and not an after school special. Get out, Clark. You're not one to judge. Five years and still not married. Just get out."

He leaves then; the sandwiches go untouched.

Clive is taken aback but he's an honorable man, a throwback a bit, and he agrees to try something for the good of their child. It's a small ceremony. She's done the huge wedding, the tacky wedding, and now the courthouse quick and dirty. At least she remembers this time. Her apartment is bigger and Clive moves in with her. She has to rearrange her space and, somehow, it pains her. Clark had it right, how she wanted it, and now it's not quite her.

She's showing, at least a little, when Clark comes back. Clive works and doesn't take lunch hours like she does. She can't even explain why she kept being at home, waiting for Clark, when they fought. It's just what she does.

She wait for him.

Clark appears and it's casual as always, just jeans and a t-shirt but he has a big stuffed rabbit with him, the size of a pillow and neon yellow. It might be the ugliest stuffed animal she's ever seen. "I...Lois said you were waiting to hear if it was a girl or a boy. I thought yellow was a good compromise."

She sighs and takes the rabbit, careful not to actually touch his hand. Chloe doesn't want confusion, only clarity. "It's nice."

"You hate it; I should have gotten green."

Chloe laughs, knowing it's a color Clark loathes, ironically more because it reminds him of peas more than Kryptonite. "No, it's fine. Did you name him?"

"Thumper."

She laughs again and she can't keep up her guard, grabbing his arm and yanking on it a little. "You're so unoriginal, farmboy."

"And you, you're too eclectic."

"There's no nursery yet. I...just leave him on the table. Have you eaten? I have some...well there's some...okay I haven't done any shopping."

Clark shakes his head and then realizes the apartment's changed, notices the engagement ring on her finger. "Oh."

She holds up her hand and shrugs. "I know, been here before right? At least it's not plastic or from a vending machine, you know?"

"Good omen, definitely," he admits. "It's very nice, Chlo."

She frowns then, quirking her head at him, a question coming out unbidden. "Did you make Lois's?"

"What?"

"Lois's, did you make it? I know you made Lana's that one time..." She trails off trying not to mention his father's death. Clark's not mentioned either of his parents in years and she can't help but feel he's left Martha behind, let her be content with Conner, separated himself from the Kents as much as he has Kent farm.

"No. I bought it with five months' salary. I...it means more that way if you had to eat peanut butter to afford it."

"That's sweet," she replies, and she pushes the lump in her throat away. "We have forty minutes. Take me along for the ride, pick the place." She's in his arms then, her head pressed to his chest, and she knows that neither of them should do this, that there's something far too intimate about flying.

She doesn't care.

He comes every other day when she's pregnant. She has no idea why really. He watches her, often squinting, as if it's time lapse photography and, to him, maybe it is. She's seven months and thirty four pounds heavier than she had been, feeling completely tired and swollen and off center, when she finally asks him over pickles and chocolate ice cream (who knew Kryptonians were that eccentric too) why he comes so much.

He takes another bite of pickle and doesn't quite meet her eyes. "I dunno. It's like I don't believe it. You're Chloe."

"Chloe one of the guys," she jests. "Just like Pete but with boobs."

"No, I just mean we're grown ups."

"Have been for a while."

"And, well, I never saw you as a mom."

"Me neither. I will try and be a cool Lorelai Gilmore type."

"Huh?"

"You never turned on a TV even once, did you Clark? I just mean it doesn't make me a nun or lame. I'll still be on my leads and writing. I'll still be in contact with Watchtower if you need another set of eyes and ears. I just...well I'll be reading bedtime stories first. It'll be nice, you know? I haven't felt like a family with anyone in a real long time. Dad left for Los Angeles when he got that job offer before college and it's never...we haven't been close since. Lucy's always abroad with the General."

"There's me and Lois," he offers.

"It's not the same, really," she says. "So, really, you're a shit liar, Clark. You used to only come once a week or less. Why the fan club for the fetus?"

He shrugs. "I...we tried , you know. Emil says I can't, and, well, that's a lot of stress on things. It all sort of amazes me, what you're doing, how it works." He stops then and looks away, shoulders shaking and she gets up and rubs them, chasing back her own pain, her own memories of a fall carnival long ago and what she saw immediately.

"I'm sorry. You'll be a good cousin for the baby, I'm sure."

"Yeah, the kind you see officially once a year when you fly home commercial for Christmas."

She stills but still rubs, but sighs. "Come anyway. I...we'll figure a way around it. I like lunch time. It's us and it's...you're right, you're about the only family I have left."

"Lois-"

"It hurts to see her a lot. I'm an asshole, I know it, but it hurts anyway."

He nods and stands stiffly. For a second he holds her gaze. "Lana...she told me once that when we were kids, really, you told her it was easy for me to talk to you because I wasn't in love with you."

She's upgraded to feeling like she swallowed glass. How keen. "Yeah."

He strokes her cheek and if Clive caught her at this... "I can talk to you, because you're you, Chloe and you understand me more than anybody. It's why I come. It never feels right talking with anyone else. I don't have with anyone what we have."

She smiles and it feels like her face will crack. "That's what best friends are for."

"Yeah, friends," he says a little dazed before taking off.

She's days before delivering but excited for Clark to come. He's spent two weeks in another galaxy on a favor to The Green Lantern and she almost wants to bean Hal herself. She wants Clark here, wants him to be able to see her child, be the proud cousin. She doesn't want to deliver without him. He can't be there officially. He and Lois can't get time from The Planet to go half way around the world. But he'll come; it's what he does.

He's back that afternoon, coming by the same time as always and she's grinning genuinely then. This is what she's waited for. "You're back!"

He sneezes and at least as the sense to cover his nose. "Yeah, I feel like crap though. Conner's taking my patrols for a week. I think I even have a fever."

"You caught a space flu and brought it to me and my unborn child?"

"I missed you?" he says and it amuses her, despite her frustration, that he can be cowed by her.

"I'm not invulnerable anymore, Clark."

"Well, I'll stand in a corner. I promised to come see your nursery before Hal called me in. I still mean it."

"Stay far away before I get extraterrestrial measles."

"Yes ma'am," he says, taking a few long strides back behind her.

She goes to the nursery, opening the doors wide. "What do you think?"

He gapes, frowning a little, but still keeping his distance. "I...it's a very distinct theme."

She nods hard, like a bobble head and keeps grinning. "I know. Isn't this great. Lois sent me the glow in the dark stars from the states. Alfred helped me find the model planets to hang, and I got J'onn to mail me some really great Warrior Angel stuff. All the knock offs here don't really get it right."

"It's very outer spacey," Clark says, still frowning.

"Is that wrong? I think if he grows up liking Warrior Angel, it'll be cool."

Clark eyes a pillow in the corner and she blushes. "And that," he says, pointing to the fluffy bundle, bearing his House crest. Queen Industries had long appropriated it and everything sold with it on it went to a variety of charities Clark approved of. It was smart. Otherwise it'd just be up for anyone to grab.

"I like that. I have a mug of it too, you know."

"I...it's nice, Chlo."

"Just nice?"

He grins, a bit more relaxed. "It could use a yellow bunny, I think."

She goes to the changing table and pulls Thumper out from the middle shelf. Tossing it to him, she chuckles. "Better yet, Superman?"

He shakes his head and tosses the bunny softly back to her. "Not here, Chlo."

"Huh?"

"Here, it's just Clark right?"

She nods, thinking of the boy she used to be taller than, that awkward kid with no friends with his nose in a book. "Always." It finally occurs to her he's in uniform and that it's filthy. "Was I your first stop? What about Lois?"

"Huh?"

"You know, Lois, your fiance for like five years. She might want to see you too." She sighs; Clark was always dense. "You might have wanted to go to her first."

"I made my promise and I kept it," he said, skipping out before she could ask him more.

She knows something's different after Carl's born. She knows she doesn't feel as she always has, at least not since she was twenty-one and a meteor freak. To test her theory, a few months after her son is born, she cuts her finger with a knife, fat tears rolling down her cheeks when it glows and heals instantly. She'll have to see Emil about it, to see what's happened to her exactly, but she assumes it was the hormone changes. Who knows how her power ever operated. Brainiac stole it and pregnancy brought it back.

She's as thrilled the second time around as she was the first.

Clark, this time in casual clothes, sticking to his usual M.O., finds her rocking Carl in his room, crying silently. She blushes when he approaches. Her breast exposed as she nurses as well. Of course, thanks to Scottish ghosts, he's seen everything she has to offer and she, him. "Chloe?" he asks, reaching out to her shoulder.

"Um, give me a sec to finish up and put him to sleep. Get yourself a sandwich or something."

He nods and turns a little red when he notices she's exposed a bit. "Oh!"

He's gone so fast her hair flutters in his wake. After she sets a very satiated Carl down for his nap, she goes to the fridge and pours herself some Coke. She could use the caffeine. Draining half of it, she sits down at her table. Idly, she wonders how many meals they've shared there by now. "It's back."

"I don't understand."

She holds out her palm and concentrates, and Clark takes in a sharp breath at the tell-tale glow. "I can heal again. No one's been injured here but I tested it on a cut on my hand and it fixed itself. I think, maybe the pregnancy did it, even strengthened it more."

"Emil, does he know?"

"Going to schedule something with him tonight."

"And Clive? Did you tell him?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "That's my decision to make."

"I don't have to remind you about me and Lana at first or about you and Jimmy before you admitted it?"

"I...this isn't Smallville. I mean, yeah, there's metas and a Justice League, but I just...there are things I keep away from him."

"Like me and that you consult for us?"

She nods. "I could never explain I'm Superman's 'bestie' and no one would ever believe me anyway." She drains her drink and sighs. "I didn't want to be this way ever again. What if I'm like my mom? What if I go nuts because of this." She's crying again, and she doesn't care. Chloe doesn't even realize when Clark starts holding her again, just that he is and she's crying into his shoulder, not able to stop.

"Shh, Chlo. You won't, I promise."

"How do you know?"

He squeezes her tightly but it doesn't hurt and she's always amazed by his control. "Because I'm your personal bomb squad and I say so."

Her life maintains in its rhythm. She stops going to doctors, is careful never to hurt herself, even takes Carl (via Clark and only when her son's conked out) to see Emil. A round of tests prove he's normal, that his DNA is irregular to an extent, but that he's not gotten her abilities. She breathes a sigh of relief. No one should have to die like she does.

But how can she not?

It's her gift and if anyone in the League should ever need it; it's what she does.

Clark still comes, he's upped it to every noon, every lunch time for her. Sometimes, he goes with her to a park on the other side of town, where no one knows her. They sit and watch first as Carl sits in the sand and chews on it, then as he learns to walk and climb the slide, then swing on the monkey bars. He's four in no time and she can't believe that's so.

They're sitting there, side by side, each sipping on a bottled water, when Clark throws in something that cuts her to the quick. "We set a date, you know, for real this time. I...it's going to be the thirteenth of May."

"I can't come. I...Clive has an award banquet that following night and we have to fly the normal way, you know that. It's a huge press thing and he's worked so hard for it." For once, she's glad for the hubbub. She went once already to support him, her soul feeling crushed inside. She can't do it again; she's not that good an actress.

Clark's face falls. "Oh."

She forces herself to smiles and squeezes his hand. "I'm sure it'll be wonderful. I'll send Lois something for her four things."

"Four things?"

"Yes, something's borrowed, etc.?"

"Right! Sure, that's great."

"Clark," she starts, wringing her hands, knowing that she'll hate the answer. "Why did you wait seven years to try again?"

"I don't know. Something always came up. I..." he turns to her and he's leaning too close, his lips inches from hers.

Chloe blushes and stands up, heading to the monkey bars. Carl loves those damn things; he swings on them until he blisters. "It's good though. Lois is going to be really happy. That's what matters."

"Chloe-" he says, helping her collect her son, taking one hand in his.

Someone passing through the park smiles at them and says something quick in the native tongue and Chloe blushes. "Come on Carl." And she's pushing ahead of Clark, knowing he'll not fight her or use his speed in public.

"Chloe! What did he say?"

She's halfway to the park's exit when he shouts again. "Chloe! Come on!"

Carl grins and turns to him. "He said you make a good couple. Duh."

Out of the mouths of babes.

The next time, she's the one holding him. He's been busy with wedding prep and his job and his other job, and she's been busy with her son and trying to keep up at work. It's exhausting and after the mistake at the park...it's just awkward for her to see him. But he comes to her on the night of May 14th, which is so early his time. She knows why, of course. Lois called her first, saying it was one last straw, one more time and she couldn't do it anymore, that nine years of it was enough and that she'd tried too many times and come in second.

Then some stuff about Oliver and the General and other things.

Chloe nods and mumbles at the right times, not really hearing her.

When Clark comes, he looks like hell and his suit and cape are torn. She doesn't want to know what he's been fighting against or whom. He smells of smoke and of ash, and his eyes are bright. She knows he's been crying but pretends not to notice their sheen.

"I heard."

He nods and collapses in her kitchen. She holds him, glad for Clive's banquet and that the babysitter canceled last minute. "I don't understand. I just don't. It's been a very long time, Chlo. I thought we were forever."

She remembers this. This is familiar. She held him when Lana left him for Lex, when she "died," and when she became walking Kryptonite. She consoled him all the time with his back and forth with Lois. It's exhausting and drains her very soul, but she does it because she loves him and because she loves him, she wants him to be happy more than she wants anything else, except for her son to be safe and loved.

It occurs to her she doesn't much care what Clive wants and that makes her feel horrible.

"I thought with her it'd work. Lana was a huge mistake but Lois has been there for so long."

"I know."

"I didn't know she was getting tired of me."

Chloe had noticed things at Christmas but had chalked her cousin's short temper to Holiday stress. Now she realized better. "You can make it better; I'm sure."

"I tried. I did, but she didn't like that I waited so long and that we have to have a third go around. I...well I might have hesitated on the comm link about setting a new new date."

She picks her head up and looks at him and they're too close again, maybe they always were. "Why?"

His breath is on her face, hot and strong. She flashes back to De Saad's abuse and knows, at least, this Clark is real. "I'm in love with someone else and she knows it."

Chloe slaps him, hard, and hisses as the broken bones in her hand knit themselves back together. "I hate you."

He's leaning into her, trying to hug her close, and she holds up her hand. "I'll break it again, damn it."

He stops and stands up, straightening his cape, putting it in front of him because that is too noticeable not to hide with creative capery. "Chloe, I'm serious."

"No. You had your chance so many times, and now I'm married, again and have a son and I can't. I'm not the back pocket girl anymore. Fuck it, I'm not even 'Chloe Sullivan.' She was in love with you and now 'Elizabeth Cochran' is busy having her own life. I...you can't come back again. You can call me, okay? Email, whatever, but you can't come back, Clark. I'm not a cheater."

"But-"

"No, you're sad because of Lois and I won't be your substitute. Fuck off."

He doesn't say a word but is gone just like that, a blink and nothing at all.

Chloe tries to redecorate Carl's room but he cries at the changes and she puts it all back. She buys a bow and arrows (not in Oliver's colors) and tries to get him enamored with anyone but Superman, wishing she'd never drawn that comic for him, started telling him the secret story only she knew.

The bow goes untouched but the pillow with the El crest is a constant in her life, mocking her.

She emails Clark at least once a week. It's not as bad as that horrible year she was Watchtower obsessed and he first really fell for Lois. She is mad but can't find it in herself to hate him. She just can't be separate from him. They talk shop and reporting, the politics of the papers, whether they should give up print journalism as it lays dying. Sometimes they reminisce on the old times-the more normal ones-but they don't talk about the saves they've made together or their feelings. She's clear on that.

He asks about Carl every time until she asks him to stop.

He's made his choices and he has to live with them.

They go on like that, writing long correspondences to each other for years and years. She needs the distance. It's back like when she went abroad and found herself again or at least started to. He can see her in an instant but he respects her as a partner, in a way neither Jimmy or Oliver ever did, and he stays. The emails-long and voluminous-the link between them.

Then Chloe turns forty and the carefully constructed life she's made collapses on itself.

It's been nine years since she's seen Clark. She's read his words and heard his voice, watched Superman on TV because who doesn't? She even teleconferences with the Big Seven when they need her perspective. She just won't see him, knowing she's not strong enough to resist his kiss.

She knows she's not aging, probably hasn't in the nine years since Carl was born. There's no crows feet or smile lines at her mouth, there's no streaks of gray through her blonde hair. She's frozen as she was and it's getting more obvious now, and Clive knows she'd never go in for Botox. He starts to stare at her oddly, and as she lies, she feels the distance grow between them. She already lies enough-about correspondences with Clark, about her role in the League, about 'Chloe Sullivan' and her past. The truth of her power is more than their relationship can take. When she accidentally burns her hand, trying to bake cookies with Carl, her son freaks out, running to get Clive, dragging her him just as she heals.

Words are exchanged, truths come out.

Clive loved Elizabeth Cochran, reporter. He doesn't even know Chloe Sullivan, meteor freak, nor does he care to.

She's on the next plane to Metropolis, her son in tow. She could go to DC and stay with Martha, even to Central City where Lois has set up shop as The Sentinel's star reporter, having left Clark, Superman and all her pain behind. But she doesn't want to. When life falls apart, there's only one pair of arms she wants around her, one person who can comfort her.

She cries all night, thankful the flight and jet lag tired her son out. He shouldn't hear this, see her collapse.

Clark holds her and she's aware it's in his bed and that it could be taken as something more, but he's been single almost a decade and she's on her third divorce. It's them again, alpha and omega, as it always had been. Two kids with too much book smarts and eccentricities, two adults with secrets piled high.

The mutant and the alien.

They're what they have, and all they need.

Clark takes the news she's immortal in stride and she sees him smile when she tells him, before carefully schooling his expression to neutral. They start building something then. She ignores what Lois says pointedly about leftovers at Christmas and Thanksgiving, eventually not caring when the invites no longer come. Clark, similarly, ignores Oliver's digs at League meetings. Everyone else has had their shot and she and Clark have waited almost three decades-years of missed connections and fear and pain. Years that have blurred by and left them here. Her son learning to deal with his cousin-come-father figure, and the both of them realizing they might have thousands of years between them.

Three decades out of that, thirty years about to grow to who they need to be. It doesn't seem like such a loss.

She wouldn't have made it with him as a fifteen year old rife with insecurities, naive in ethics. She wouldn't have made it at twenty with the fears about her mother driving her and Clark's father's death on his head. There might have been something there, a flicker of regret at twenty-four, realizing that waking up "married" almost seemed expected and right.

But then it would have crushed Lois and Oliver, and they were honorable like that.

They have time now. They're adults in every sense of the word, and they have all the time in the world.

I walk for miles along the highway  
>Well, that's just my way of saying I love you<br>I'm always walking after midnight  
>Searching for you<p>

- Walkin' After Midnight by Pasty Cline


End file.
